


Ghosts

by below_the_starry_clusters_bright



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Gen, and everyone is angst, in which plots are made, the dark world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2056539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/below_the_starry_clusters_bright/pseuds/below_the_starry_clusters_bright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane Foster, furious and breathing heavily, declares her vengeance on behalf of New York. Loki doubts Midgard was consulted in this choice of representation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> I’m easing myself into writing these characters, hence unoriginality, but I have a couple of other Lokane fics I’m planning to write. Italicised dialogue has been lifted directly from The Dark World. Hope you enjoy!

 The difference between bravery and stupidity is shaped like the flat palm which strikes Loki’s cheek. He jerks his head to the side in an act of mercy Thor’s mortal does not deserve and spends the next three seconds wondering if he should have just let her break her hand.  
  
 Jane Foster, furious and breathing heavily, declares her vengeance on behalf of New York. Loki doubts Midgard was consulted in this choice of representation. A graceful smile slides over his lips and he lets out a glib comment designed to rile everyone further. It works, of course; the tension notches up another step. Though Loki revels in it after months of near-solitude, his amusement fades the longer Jane glares up at him. By the time she looks away, his resentment has whittled away any mirth. _This_ is the slip of a woman who tamed a god? He has seen her before, of course, through the eyes of the Destroyer and thanks to a cursory sift through Erik Selvig’s mind, but she is far smaller than the second-hand peeks made her appear.  
  
 Loki had intended to study her further once Midgard was under his rule and he could interrogate Doctor Selvig properly – he is a man of his word if the word suits him, and a veritable lexicon surrounds the promises he made regarding Jane Foster – but the spectacular dismantling of his plans had quickly put a stop to that. Now by some strange twist of fate she stands before him in Asgard with the snarling rage of a wronged kitten, unaware of the trap she sets for herself, and Loki can almost hear the doubts he could plant in her mind about Thor’s unsuitability as a consort.  
  
 Plans are exchanged around him as the escape from Asgard is finalised. They pull Loki back to his true purpose of revenge against Malekith, against which Jane Foster is nothing. She shoots him one last dark look before following Thor down the hallway. Loki feels the familiar pulse of bitter satisfaction that he could get under someone’s skin in such a way. His lip curls as he watches her hand twitch. She desperately wants to flex it and ease the stinging, but she will not allow herself to show weakness in front of beings already so superior to her.  
  
  _Good,_ he thinks. _That will teach her to strike a god_.  
  
 He smirks at Sif’s warning and grins at Volstagg’s, although both please him in a way. They have gone from underestimating him to considering him someone worthy of threats. Soon enough, they will realise that they should have killed him the moment he stepped foot back on Asgard.

  
\--

  
 The ghost of camaraderie possesses the once-brothers as they steer their way to rebellion in a stolen craft. Loki tries not to let it bother him; a ghost may linger but nothing changes the fact that it is still ultimately dead. Let him be haunted for a moment. Once their ship crashes into the dark ground of Svartalfheim, Loki does not guard his tongue. The truths he wields like daggers slice into Thor’s stubborn assurances that he can hold onto Jane Foster, and Loki is too busy chasing his own vindictiveness to see that he pushes too far.  
  
_“The son of Odin.”_  
  
  _“No, not just of Odin!”_  
  
 What follows has Loki throwing up every shield he has to try and deflect Thor’s jabs at the guilt he tries to pretend isn’t debilitating. The effort wears his anger away until Thor’s refusal to drive his fist forward breaks him down into exhaustion. He remembers his thin-lipped mother physically separating her sons from their latest scrap and reminding them of the appropriate behaviour for young princes. Her frown would never ease until she received a joint, “Sorry, Mother.” Only then did her expression soften, and she would send them on their way with a wry smile. The scene had been repeated often enough to etch itself onto the part of Loki’s mind he had not yet managed to banish.  
  
 The memories quirk his lips upwards. Though bittersweet, it’s the closest thing to a real smile he can remember wearing in recent history. Thor’s returning smile is a thing of weary sadness.  
  
  _“I wish I could trust you.”_  
  
 He can’t, and they both know it. Loki has done unforgiveable things, things he isn’t sure he even wants to be forgiven for, things he only regrets because they turned out to be failures. Even with their faux-betrayal plan in place, the non-brothers know that a real betrayal hovers like a sword over Thor’s head. Loki doubts he could prevent it from dropping if he wanted to. Deception is in his blood and monstrosity is woven around every sinew.  
  
 Loki stands, brushing away the hope he can still see in Thor’s eyes despite his words, and resigns himself to his role.  
  
  _“Trust my rage.”_  
  
 Rage will be his fuel, not this useless grief, certainly not the flickers of love and a need for acceptance that still flare up unexpectedly. He will crush them beneath his heel until not even the embers are visible.  
  
 As Loki repairs his fortitude and promises nothing will breach it again, he watches Thor ease his newly-woken mortal from the ship. She had been unconscious for so long that Loki had almost forgotten she was there.  
  
  _All that power and still so weak_ , he thinks, sparing the both of them a glance as they begin their long trek across the vast wasteland of Svartalfheim. Their feet scuff against the dirt and send it scattering. It’s the only sound for miles. As they walk, Loki tries not to think of the adventures he had taken with Thor in their youth. He is not here for fond recollection. He is here to avenge the last connection he had to that old life.  
  
 (Loki tries not to frown at the choice of words. He will not think of himself in the context of avenging anything. The irony is too much for even him to appreciate.)  
  
 An edge of desperation mingles with the thick clouds that hang over them as they venture further into the realm. The dimness of the landscape does not bolster hope or cheer – not that Loki has had either in a long time – and its draining effects on the aether-stricken Jane Foster soon become apparent. When she stumbles, only to be caught by Thor, Loki presses his lips together. He has no use for weakness. The woman offers her lover a faintly reassuring smile and continues on her way, all the while ignoring Loki. Loki remembers the dry vast nothingness she called home (another worthless viewpoint gifted to him by the Destroyer) and supposes she must feel comfortable in such desolate places.  
  
 When it becomes clear that Jane cannot continue, they sink down near a rocky outcropping covered in a fine layer of dirt. It’s only when Loki allows himself to rest that he acknowledges the ache in his legs. After months in a prison cell, his muscles have forgotten how to cross long distances without regular stops. It’s odd, he thinks, how a few months of one thing can negate a thousand years of another.  
  
 Jane insists on staying in wakeful watch if Thor wants to close his eyes. The aether gives her terrible dreams, she tells Thor, and just being able to rest her legs is already making her feel livelier. His strength is needed far more than hers, and besides, the aether will protect her long enough for her to call for him, and has he even slept in the last three days? No, she doesn’t care that he’s a god, he needs rest just as much as the next mythological being.  
  
 (Her rambling does not resemble anything close to what Loki would identify as logic, but he does not intervene. She is not speaking to him.)  
  
 Jane wears away Thor’s resistance – the Crown Prince’s usual impenetrability to common sense is rendered useless, as what Jane spouts makes no sense whatsoever – and eventually he nods. He levels Loki with a long look but the vestiges of faith he still holds in his non-brother prevent any real suspicion. Loki replies with his least-innocent innocent smile, at which Jane scowls and Thor ignores. The sight of them both pulls up the corners of his mouth into something more genuine.

 Loki settles down a short distance away from them. He leans against the bottom of a slight slope and takes careful note of his surroundings, losing himself so intently in the analysis that it’s several minutes before he feels the prod of a rock in his side. Even through the thick layers of leather and metal, it is an annoyance. He wants to snatch at it and hurl it away as far as he can, if only to add some movement to the stasis which surrounds him, but he will not risk attracting attention. He takes the rock and tosses it lightly. It skitters across the dark ground, dragging his focus with it, and settles in such a place where, if he shifts his eye-line slightly, he cannot avoid the sight of his travelling companions.  
  
 He pays them more attention than they have afforded him. They talk in quiet murmurs. Jane leans into the hand Thor places gently against her cheek, and says something that brings about a quiet laugh. There’s a softness in Thor’s eyes as he gazes back at her, completely at odds with their harrowing situation and environment.  
  
 Loki turns away and pretends to be asleep. He feels uncomfortable and displaced for witnessing simple intimacies, as though he has drawn back a curtain and glimpsed beyond into a world that is not his to know. Something jealous and hateful claws at the inside of his empty stomach. He poisons himself with scorn to try and make the feeling stop, and when that doesn’t work he repeats his plans in his head like a mantra. There is the one in which Thor is complicit, the one in which he is not, the one which will ultimately give Loki his throne, and the one in which the best case scenario is a quick death. If Loki can successfully complete the first three plots, he need not fear the final one.  
  
 Light footsteps break his concentration. Loki opens his eyes and watches Jane Foster step over to the edge of their outcropping, stopping just short of the drop down into the wasteland below. A quick glance back shows that Thor has already fallen into sleep. Loki remembers envying his non-brother’s ability to sleep wherever he rested his head. Now, it is a weakness. Thor has left the one he claims to love completely unguarded. Does he not know there are monsters here?  
  
 Jane sits like a child in the dirt, doing nothing to change Loki’s opinion that mortals are inherently lowly creatures. There is a grey pallor to her face, as though she is trying to assimilate with her dreary surroundings. Her fingers are pale against the dirt she drags them through.

 Loki stands and moves towards her, pushed forward by a curiosity he is reluctant to admit to and a desire to provoke that he is all too willing to acknowledge. He is silent in his journey. His boots barely dent the ground they walk on. He comes to a stop behind her, brushes away idle fantasies of sending her tumbling down the hillside, and draws a breath.  
  
 “What are you doing?”  
  
 Jane’s head snaps up as every other part of her body freezes. Her eyes flick towards the shackles which bind Loki’s hands, then to where Thor sleeps, and finally back down to the dirt she rubs between her fingers. Loki keeps his silence and allows her to hold onto her delusion of safety. He knows that, given time, he could break out of the cuffs. There is little he cannot do when he sets his mind to it.  
  
(Aside from subjugating or destroying planets, but he’s fairly confident that this is a trial and error process which he will eventually overcome.)  
  
 “You know that the aether lashes out if I feel threatened,” Jane says. There is a warning beneath her words that stop them from being idle observation. Rather than bristle at the implication, Loki is pleased that is not as fearless as she affects.  
  
 “A curious reason to be collecting dirt.”  
  
 Jane’s lips twitch in annoyance but she does not rise to his bait. “I won’t be able to take a sample of the dirt back to my lab,” she tells him in steady tones, “so I’m trying to make notes on its structure.”  
  
 Amusement tugs at Loki as Jane stands up. From the height he stares down at her from, she may as well have remained seated.  
  
 “Why do you care for dirt?”  
  
 Jane lifts a shoulder in a listless shrug. She works hard to avoid extended eye contact with him. “I might be the first mortal to ever visit Svartalfheim.” Her tongue stumbles over the unfamiliar word. “I want to remember as much about it as I can for future reference.”  
  
 Loki raises an eyebrow. “You seem remarkably confident that we will leave here alive.”  
  
 “I have faith in Thor.”  
  
 The defiance in her tone pricks at Loki more than he would like. She speaks as though distrusting him is a novelty which others have never enjoyed, and her superiority is both maddening and darkly funny. Loki decides he will have some fun of his own.  
  
 “You ought not,” he tells her, employing a soft voice which will do most of his work for him. “There is a choice he will have to make, one day soon, and you will not be it.” Her anger returns at his affected pity. Its fire licks at the corners of her pupils. Loki basks in it. “Do you intend to strike me again?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “It’s poor form to attack a man who cannot fight back, even if he is a god.” He lifts his manacled hands, daring her into taking action and vowing to himself that if she does, he will not move his head this time. “By all means, lash out if it soothes you. You can hardly dent my esteem; I have been hated by far worthier beings than you.”  
  
 Loki turns his gaze deliberately to Thor’s sleeping form. He expects to hear a litany of his sins to throw him into sharp contrast with Asgard’s golden prince, and is surprised for a half-moment when Jane scoffs.  
  
 “Thor doesn’t hate you,” she says, following his gaze. “You’re his brother.”  
  
 Loki smiles without warmth. He wonders how much Thor has told her about the Frost Giant interloper in Asgard’s royal family. Probably nothing. Thor would not want anything to stain Miss Foster’s view of him, and even a mortal could understand the shame in growing up with a monster for a brother.  
  
 He lowers his hands, almost disappointed that he could not goad a more physical reaction from Jane. For all the strength her righteousness lends her intonation and expression, she remains delicate in form. Attempts at violence on her part would have a slapstick quality to them that could lend Loki some much-needed cheer. Instead, he sets himself to the task of unearthing anything she may be hiding from him. The mortal would likely not have thought up anything that could truly be a threat, but Loki has long since vowed he would never leave anything to chance or trust. He stares down at Jane with cold eyes.  
  
 “Thor’s version of subtlety leaves much to be desired, and I can only imagine what _you_ think constitutes stealth.” He leans towards her, crowding her with his height in a cruel imitation of the security Thor’s bulk provides her. “I hear you whispering with each other. You must know it’s not in your best interests to betray me.”  
  
 “What? We’re not…no, that isn’t what we’re talking about.”  
  
 Loki relaxes marginally at the naked confusion on her face. He did not truly suspect Thor of plotting against him, but he would have been able to pick apart Jane Foster’s lies as easily as if they were spider-webs. He is content to let her leave her descriptions of sentimental whisperings with the God of Thunder to herself, but she fidgets in a way that draws his attention. She’s uncomfortable and reluctant to speak, which of course means that Loki is eager to hear what she has truly been saying. Before he can think of a way to coax it out of her, the words fall unbidden from her lips.  
  
 “I lost my mother, too. Both my parents, actually. So I…I get what you guys are feeling right now.”  
  
 The words squeeze a band around Loki’s chest and call to life the anguish he spends so much time trying to restrain. His grief is a raw and visceral thing, ugly in its bloodstains and claw marks, and it roils within his false skin. It is not meant for Jane Foster, who watches him with questions in her eyes, to understand its depths. Loki marvels at her arrogance and brushes off any assumption that she can help him.  
  
 “How old were you when they died?” he asks. His voice is a warning coated in honey. If Jane had any sense at all, she would be grovelling in an attempt to redirect that terrible tone.  
  
 As it is, she lowers her eyes and presses her lips together before answering, “Fourteen.”  
  
 “Fourteen years old.” Loki pretends to muse over the words, although the growing anger inside him bites at his tone. “Tell me, Jane Foster, how old do you imagine me to be?”  
  
 He sees comprehension seep in and strip her of her pity. The sorrow in her eyes hardens. “Grief isn’t measured by how long you’ve known someone. Neither is love.”  
  
 “Clearly.” Loki latches onto this new topic, away from the pain which threatens to burst from him in a series of screams. “Has Thor taken you to the valley by the palace gardens yet? It’s a place he frequents with his conquests.”  
  
 Jane’s back stiffens and for one glorious moment, Loki thinks she will lash out at him again.  
  
 “I wasn’t in Asgard for a vacation,” she tells him, stung. “There wasn’t much time for sightseeing.”  
  
 “A shame. Your skirts will have to wait for their grass stains, then.”  
  
 Jane scowls, and the sight sends a thrill of mischief through him. If she thought those words were vulgar, he has a choice selection of things he can murmur into her ear that would make her flush the same scarlet as Thor’s cloak. Loki considers it, and decides with a grin that the thought is not unappealing. How ill she would fare in the rowdy taverns of Asgard if the simplest insinuation would stain her cheeks.  
  
 In the space of a blink, Jane’s eyes turn the colour of pitch. She turns out towards the wasteland beneath and beyond them and draws in a deep, shuddering breath.  
  
  _“Malekith…”_  
  
 The word escapes in a rush of longing. A half-formed quip about Thor’s beloved desiring someone else flashes through Loki’s mind, but he is too disconcerted to fully develop it. The aether’s control flees from Jane as quickly as it gripped her. She is left staring into the distance in bewilderment and no small amount of fear. Her tiny form trembles.  
  
 “Miss Foster –”  
  
 “Doctor Foster.”  
  
 The correction carries the distant tones of one who has often repeated it. Indeed, Jane seems to only realise she has spoken until the words have dropped into the heavy air. Loki wonders what circumstances would require her to insist upon her proper title rather than having it rightly bestowed upon her.  
  
 “My apologies. Doctor Foster.” At a nod from her, Loki continues, “How is it that the aether came to possess you?”  
  
 Jane turns away from the wasteland and gathers her wits about her. Loki is privately relieved that he will not have to suffer through a burst of Jane’s frightened tears. For a moment, he wonders if she will keep the story of her discovery to herself. She has no reason to tell him, after all. Then her eyes, back to their warm brown, narrow slightly as she recalls her misfortune.  
  
 “I kind of stumbled into another realm,” she begins. Given that this could be the only interesting thing he will glean from her, Loki stops himself from scoffing. _Kind of stumbled_ , indeed. “And it was just…there. Trapped. Something about it called out to me.”  
  
 “Power,” Loki supplies. He is intimately familiar with the call’s every pitch and cadence.  
  
 Jane looks uncomfortable. “Yeah. So I reached out for it and it…” Her fingers twitch with the memory. “I absorbed it.” Her eyes snap onto Loki’s as he scoffs. “What?”  
  
 “I thought you were supposed to be intelligent.” By mortals’ standards, anyway. “Yet you find an unknown entity in an unknown realm that begs your attention, and your initial reaction is to stick your hand in it.”  
  
 Loki can’t tell if he’s amused or exasperated. In his youth he might have done the same foolhardy thing, but Jane Foster is roughly a third of the way through her life and really ought to know better. She is making a poor case for the independence of her realm.  
  
 Jane purses her lips. “I’m a scientist, that’s kind of what I do.” Then, in a petulant undertone, “I didn’t know it was going to _infect_ me.”  
  
 “And you didn’t feel it necessary to apply common sense to the situation?”  
  
 “Common sense isn’t quantifiable.”  
   
“It also, evidently, is not that common.”  
  
 Jane does not, cannot, disagree with him, although the tight lines around her mouth suggest she wishes to. Loki wonders what it would take to get to her admit she is wrong. He could find out. He could take her stubbornness and stretch it as thin as it would go before snapping it entirely. He would enjoy the process; Jane, he suspects, would not.  
  
 “I’d go so far as to propose that mortals’ innate lack of common sense is what keeps them so stunted,” he says. Jane has regained control of herself, and it rankles him. Loki will not allow the only other conscious being for miles to pretend to be so unaffected. “The rest of the universe does not suffer its absence. Even the dwarves have some semblance of it, and they have eighty four words for ‘axe’ and none for ‘shelter’.”  
  
 His attempts to insult her do not work. Instead, curiosity bleeds through the cracks of Jane’s careful neutrality. Loki watches it spark with sharp interest. He has found something which outweighs her distrust of him. Something close to satisfaction warms his blood -  
  
( _Satisfaction is not in my nature_. He has told his non-brother many lies, but that was not one of them)  
  
\- at the reveal of something he can exploit. Knowledge is a dangerous thing. The pursuit of it, perhaps more dangerous still. He will not have time to twist her ambition into something he can turn against her, against Thor, but he swears he will return to it one day.  
  
 “How many of the realms have you been to?” Jane asks, ignorant of his promise.  
  
 “All of them,” he replies, and watches her lips part in wonder.  
  
 Loki thinks he might have looked like that, once, when learning and discovery were things to enjoy rather than means of self-preservation. He shakes the thought off.  
  
 “I know their names,” Jane continues. Despite her exhaustion, enthusiasm lights up her eyes and gives her an animation Loki has not seen from her before. It suits her. “Kind of. I don’t think my pronunciation is that great. But Thor only ever really spoke about them once, and…”  
  
 She trails off, as though this mention of Thor will be the thing to finally make Loki’s temper snap. She watches him, poking at the flimsy boundaries between them with the wary glint of her eyes. Loki affects a tightening in his jaw, but in truth his mind is busy making connections in logic. Compared to Jane’s lack of knowledge about the worlds around her, Thor is a scholar of the highest intellect. Never mind that Loki could flood her mind with answers to questions she cannot even conceive. Thor’s brain was the only part of him no one had ever fawned over before, and so of course fate had to send someone along to stroke the neglected part of his ego.  
  
 Bitterness almost sends Loki reaching out to shove Jane over the edge of the rock. If he had not been ensuring that his mother had not died in vain, he would have strayed from the plan long ago. Opportunities for betrayal taunt him at almost every turn. Loki had trained himself to spot such opportunities long ago, back when he was the dutiful second son, to ensure that no enemy could take advantage of them. The irony of it now twists in his gut. Thor had never appreciated Loki’s vigilance, and now Loki could prove it to be invaluable in the worst way.  
  
 He holds back from laying his hands on Jane. She is safe from him, for today. Loki’s rota of punishments to mete out has not yet reached her name, and so he smiles and politely answers her questions and pretends not to notice when the hard edge of hostility re-enters her tone when she finally remembers who it is she talks with. Loki keeps his smile fixed in place, all the while thinking how he could take her to the edges of the void and leave her there to scream herself into madness. Or perhaps taking her with him would be a crueller fate.  
  
  _Yes_ , he thinks, warming to the idea. Her drive for knowledge ensures that it will take only a few honeyed words to convince her to accompany him. By the time she truly understands what she had done, her fate will be sealed and Thor will be broken by the loss.  
  
 Despite his intentions, Loki’s current commitments do not waver. His loyalty carries no currency anymore but he has pledged it to his mother’s memory nonetheless, and he will not dishonour her with a betrayal. He later toes the line of his promise when he kicks Thor harder than necessary and sends him sprawling into the dirt. Words he is only half-conscious of spew from him like bile as he forgets to rein in the almost-satisfaction he feels at finally besting Odin’s favourite ( _only_ ) son. It isn’t a real victory.  
  
 The real victory comes minutes later as Thor cradles him, his face crumpling even as he admonishes his foolish little brother. Loki mutters half-intelligible things in return, allowing himself to feel them only because he knows sentiment will soon bleed out of him entirely. His act of vengeance has broken the last remaining tie he has to his life on Asgard, and now all that’s left is rebirth.  
  
 Jane Foster approaches the brothers but keeps a careful distance. Loki knows that she fears him now. Before the deception was revealed, she had struggled against him as he held her in place with a grip that would bruise her skin – _let her think back on this the next time she considers striking me_ – and when he threw her to the ground, it was with a force that knocked the breath from her small body. That he had saved her life almost at the expense of his own mattered little. She had seen him fight with a feral grace as anticipation, hot and dangerous, flooded his veins. He had freed everything he sought to repress since destroying his prison cell, and in its gratitude the pain destroyed everyone around it as Jane watched in horror. She fears him now, and after so little effort on his part.  
  
 Loki stares up at his sobbing brother and says a private goodbye.  
  
  _“I didn’t do it for him.”_  
  
 And with that, Loki Frigguson, who was willing to die for love and revenge, is lost forever on the rocky plains of Svartalfheim. The god who rises in his place will make the stars weep.


End file.
